Our First Look at the Design of 2 World Trade Center

Designed by Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, the second tower will have a distinct, stair-step look

One World Trade Center finally opened its doors last year, but work on its counterpart is yet to begin. Today, architecture firm BIG and its founder Bjarke Ingels have revealed the plans for Two World Trade Center in Wired, giving us our first look at how the new tower will grace the New York City skyline.

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The challenge of designing the tower was finding a middle ground between a conservative and respectful design and something more unique and striking. The solution, Ingels found, was a structure that will look quite different depending on your viewpoint.

From the foot of the memorial, 2 WTC appears as a enormous flat tower reaching 1,340 feet into the air—almost as tall as its twin, minus the spire. But from other angles, the tower's unusual stair-step form, with seven different building sections of a dozen floors, is far more visible and striking.

We have tried to incorporate that duality. On one hand it's about being respectful and about completing the frame around the memorial, and on the other hand it's about revitalizing downtown Manhattan and making it a lively place to live and work.

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The two biggest clients for the building are Fox and News Corp, which will take up the most sizable chunks of the new buildings. Fox will also have a screening room on the building's top floor, which is guaranteed to have a magnificent view. (Ingels describes it as being "pretty epic.") The consecutively smaller blocks of office-space also leave room for a set of outdoor terraces that will face the 250-year-old St. Paul's chapel.

BIG/Rending by DBOX

While the design has been confirmed, there are still a few steps before construciton can begin. Rupert Murdoch, Chairmen and CEO of both Fox and News Corp, and the site's developer Larry Silverstein have signed a letter of intent, which is a good first step. But as Wired notes, negotiations at this stage have fallen apart before.

Still, the plan remains to have Two World Trade Center, as well as its brothers One through Four, all finished and open for business by the time the 20th anniversary of 9/11 rolls around in 2021.

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